Markus Zusak's The Messenger

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The Messenger By Markus Zusak Ed Kennedy is 19 and very much aware of how little he has going for him. His little brother's a star at university. Ed himself is a reader, but has no hopes of going any further in school. He's lied about his age in order to get a job as a cab driver. His dad has died an alcoholic. His chain-smoking mother wants him to do plenty of favors for her, but really doesn't care about him. Ed's out of the house, at least, living in a crummy little house with his huge and loveable but extremely smelly dog. He has a small circle of close friends. Marv's so obsessed with saving money that he drives a car that won't start nine times out of ten. Ritchie can't get it together enough to find a job. Audrey's a lovely thing…show more content…
He meets a woman who's being raped by her husband, a girl who wants more than anything to run races, an old woman who's wandering in her memory, an immigrant family shunned by their neighbors.... Over time, Ed learns to see himself as a person capable of changing at least a tiny bit of the world. And at the same time, his relationships with his friends change. The romance he wants to have with Audrey is especially intriguing. I really understood why he loves her and how she feels towards him. When it's good, it's very good. This award-winning novel about a slacker whose life is altered when he starts receiving mysterious playing cards in the mail has glimpses of brilliance. Aussie author Markus Zusak has that down-under way of being relaxed and hard-edged at the same time, allowing him to deal with some serious subject matter in a way that's both light and powerful. He also has a way of making his slacker characters so intelligent and appealing that it makes the reader wonder just what exactly is wrong with a life lived small and free of ambition. The resolution to the big mystery of who is sending the cards reads as if Zusak just couldn't figure out how to get out of the hole he'd dug for himself, so he just slapped this on. But if you can ignore the last 10 pages, this is a terrific, at times moving, and thought-provoking story that can lead readers to look at their own worlds in a slightly different

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